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Attuned to women's issues from the start, Sandberg wrote her undergrad thesis on the economics of spousal abuse.

Sheryl's Biography

Cause of Choice: Women for Women InternationalFirst Jobs: Saturday office manager at her father's ophthalmology practice and retail sales clerk at the mallHealthy Home: Her father, siblings, and sister-in-law are all doctors. She considers herself the black sheep for choosing business instead of medicine.Parental Role Models: "The combination of my father's drive and my mother's warmth is something I've tried to live up to. I don't think I do. You never quite live up to your parents."

By now, Sheryl Sandberg has spent more than two decades achieving at the highest reaches of governmental and corporate America. And she’s determined to bring more talented young women along with her. Sandberg earned both an economics BA summa cum laude and an MBA from Harvard and worked for McKinsey and the World Bank before serving as Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department. As Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, she was instrumental in building what is now one of the most influential enterprises on the planet. But Sandberg’s entrepreneurial instincts drove her onward. She joined the then-fledgling Facebook in 2008.

She joined Facebook in 2008 as its Chief Operating Officer and is credited with first establishing it as a profitable business. The brilliance of Sandberg’s management style is, in a sense, basic: “She builds trust because she’s honest,” her Facebook colleague Chris Cox has said. And as one of leading corporate lights of her day, Sandberg spends much of her time mentoring female executives and speaking passionately on the specific challenges they face. Says another (male) colleague: “A key part of what Sheryl does in her life is helping people advance, to be seen and to be heard.”